PVV – am I a sell out?, or PVVOnline is now listed on BlogHer.com!!

Through a series of happy accidents and twitter sass, AV came across my disillusioned and disgruntled October rant about BlogHer.com. This is what happened:

BlogHer.com – which touts the tag “Life Well Said” – is basically a collection of blogs for, by, and about women. According to their front page: “BlogHer creates opportunities for more than 20 million women who blog and their readers to gain exposure, education, community, and economic empowerment.” Blog topics include career, entertainment, family, feminism, food, health, home & garden, life, love & sex, and news & politics among others. Most topics have several sub-categorical topics listed as well.

Back in October, I approached BlogHer’s advertisement-based publishing network with PVVOnline – I wanted upwards of 20 million (26 million, to be exact) women to get a more complicated perspective on adult. This seemed reasonable to me, however my suggestion was handily dismissed by the powers that be. Needless to say, I was somewhat taken aback (read about the entire exchange here).

And then, a little more than two weeks ago, I read a piece by BlogHer’s “Love & Sex” editor, AV Flox. In it, she discussed a possibly-bad-turned-absolutely-incredible experience wherein members of her extended family found out she blogged about sex (among other things).

Now, I had always loved this woman’s writing. In fact, a suggestion from Ms. Nanciful is what turned me on to her and, consequently, to BlogHer in the first place. I felt a deep measure of empathy and “I feel you, girl”-connectivity when I read this particular piece… so I decided to share it with this tweet:

“although I dislike the BlogHer network’s discriminatory ways, I can relate to this post from @avflox on multiple levels http://bit.ly/ivPiVF” (May 15, 2011)

…which AV saw (!!), which led to a more in-depth exchange about BlogHer.

One thing I learned from her was that BlogHer actually has two “networks” – the previously mentioned ad-based publishing network (which had rejected PVV) and a Blog Directory. She encouraged me to submit PVVOnline to the Blog Directory, which is simply a categorical listing of blogs and not directly linked to the publishing network. 26 million women would then have greater access to PVVOnline.

I wrestled with this.

Part of me wanted to maintain my “Screw you, BlogHer!!” stance – Screw you, BlogHer!! How dare you say you’re willing to empower readers with more critical, diverse, and nuanced information and perspectives and then reject PVV because of conservative advertising strategies!!…

…however another part of me kept coming back to the whole reason I write PVV in the first place – porn and adult production are complex; and we, as a culture and society, need access to a more complex and nuanced picture of what’s happening within this extremely influential industry.

So then, the conundrum: do I maintain my “screw you” stance a la the 14-year-old I sometimes still am, or do I do whatever I can, big or small, to help broaden human perspective and complicate our understanding of all human experiences (because that’s what PVV does)?